A Question of Beauty
by CanaryMoon
Summary: Rapunzel asks Eugene the question all men dread, and Eugene gives an unexpected answer. Fluff, but a more serious side to these two lovelies.


**Just gonna say... this fic is best experienced after or while listening to Bruno Mars's "Just the Way You Are", which will give yourself the warm and fuzzies. ;)**

**Pfffffft… writing in present tense is bloody hard. But it was calling to me to be written in present. And as much as I love writing these two funny, I wanted this to show the serious side to R-punz and my man Eugene. It does feel a bit OOC to me simply because of the seriousness, but I hope you like it despite it's lack of lulz.**

/

He's not thinking of anything in particular at the moment. He's sprawled out on his stomach in the grass a few feet away from the princess, flicking cashews out of his palm at Pascal, who's catching them with his mile-long tongue and grinning at Eugene with every swallow. It isn't the sort of day for deep thinking and introspection. In fact, Eugene's feeling quite happily braindead, Pascal's feeling well-fed, and if Rapunzel happens to be engrossed in an immense tome devoted to architecture, well… that's just Rapunzel.

So the question, when it comes, catches Eugene off-guard.

It's _the_ question. The question that all women ask their fiancés at some point. The very same question that all fiancés dread being asked. Eugene begins to sweat over his answer before Rapunzel has even finished asking it.

"Eugene, do you think I'm beautiful?"

He looks up, surprised. How she came up with that from an architecture textbook is something he's sure he'll never know. But he quickly forgets this when the magnitude of The Question settles on his mind. He has to say, he never really thought he'd hear The Question from Rapunzel.

Oh, he knows the answer. The correct answer to The Question is always yes. _Simple._

Except it's not.

Because it's not so much what he says as how he says it. He can't answer too quickly because then he won't be taking the question seriously. He can't answer too slowly because then he'll have taken the time to realize that it's in his _best interest _to say yes. If you're going to answer The Question properly, he knows you've got to time it to perfection.

But the thing Eugene realizes as he opens his mouth to say yes is that this procedure he's come up with is all well and good as long you're talking to a normal girl. And Rapunzel - even minus the seventy feet of magical golden hair - is nowhere near normal.

And suddenly, Eugene has no idea how to reply to this. So he says the first coherent sentence his brain can manufacture. He's aware that it isn't a very good answer (if it counts as an answer at all, which it probably doesn't since it's another question) and it quite literally pains him to bring up Gothel, but he says it anyway.

"What… what did Gothel tell you?"

Rapunzel's eyes snap over to his - lighting up with that fierceness most people don't realize she has. She doesn't understand what Gothel has to do with anything and she's annoyed at him for bringing her into an otherwise perfect day.

"I'm serious, Rapunzel," he says gently, before she can utter a word. "Did she ever tell you you were beautiful?"

She sighs and looks away and hugs her knees. "Well, sometimes we'd be standing by the mirror, and she'd say something like, 'you know what I see? A beautiful young lady.' Then she'd laugh and say, 'oh look, you're here too!'" She shrugs. "So I guess not."

Now, Eugene hasn't got much experience with mothers, but to him, this seems like pretty lousy parenting. While he's mulling over what to say next, Rapunzel asks, in a harder voice, "what does that have to do with anything?"

He takes a deep breath. "Don't take this the wrong way, Rapunzel, but you're very…"

"Weird?" she suggests, unsurprised.

"I was gonna say _different,_" he insists (truthfully, it ought to be said.)

He knows she believes him because her face softens.

"It's just…" He flops over and sits up beside her. "I can't help but think that beautiful means something entirely different to you than it does to the rest of the world." He gives her his most honest look without really meaning to - he's not usually honest on purpose - and asks, "why do you want to know all of a sudden?"

Frustrated, she runs a hand through her brown hair. "I've been reading books forever, and they're all full of beautiful people. Have you ever noticed how the main characters of stories are always good-looking?"

Oh, he's noticed, all right. He didn't name himself Flynn Rider for nothing, after all. She continues, "but none of them are the same. They've got blonde hair and brown hair and red hair and black hair; dark skin, light skin, freckles, no freckles. Blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes…" She huffs in exasperation.

So far Eugene doesn't understand, but she's on a roll now and she's not stopping until she's got it all out. "They make it seem like everyone can be beautiful, but now that I've actually seen things… that's not the way people think, is it?" Rapunzel turns to him with a face so earnestly confused, she seems almost to be in pain.

He's been dreading this moment, more than any guy has ever dreaded The Question. Not the moment when she asks him, the most shallow guy in the world, about beauty, thereby causing him to have a panic-attack, but the moment when she realizes that, as terrible as Gothel was, and as unfair as it was to be locked up in a tower for eighteen years, some of the things her evil stepmother told her were true. The world isn't always new and shiny and wonderful. A lot of perfectly normal people probably envy Rapunzel's early life - tower and crazy lady and all.

"Rapunzel…" he begins but he doesn't know how to continue, so he stops to contemplate.

Finally he asks, "what do you think?"

It's Rapunzel's turn to be caught off-guard. "What do you mean? Do _I_ think I'm beautiful?"

"No, I mean, what do you think of people in general? Are most people beautiful?"

She ponders this. She frowns a little and stares into space as she does. "I guess so. But I like looking at all people. We're all so different!" She's excited again, and it warms his heart up a little to see her back to her usual, happy self. "I mean, I know the guys from the Snuggly Duckling all think they're pretty ugly, but I don't. I don't even think Big Nose is ugly."

Eugene reflects briefly that if Big Nose is no longer ugly, they'll have to come up with a new name for him. But what he says, with a small chuckle, is, "you're something else, Blondie."

She laughs too and they lapse into meditative silence until Rapunzel says, "you never answered my question."

_Do you think I'm beautiful? _The words ring in his head.

There are a million replies to this.

He could be honest and say he hadn't always thought so. Truth be told, the first time he saw her, his only thought was, 'good, a girl. My smolder'll get me out of here in no time.' It wasn't til a few minutes later that he realized she was 'kind of cute'. It wasn't til he saw her sing at the Snuggly Duckling that 'pretty' replaced 'cute', and even then, the word 'beautiful' didn't occur to him until he grabbed her shoulders and hauled up from under the water they were drowning in. Sometime after that 'beautiful' became the only thing he could think about.

He could be honest and say that he's never seen a girl as beautiful as Rapunzel. He could come up with some sappy line about how she reminds him of a star and yet shines brighter even than the sun.

He could be honest and tell her that - poetic drivel aside - she was pretty darn gorgeous, both by his standards (which were fairly high) and the world's (which were higher still). He could even mention how other men sometimes looked at her if he wanted to. He didn't want to.

He could be honest and say that if she weren't so beautiful on the inside, she would be drastically less so on the outside…

He worries sometimes that she felt more beautiful with her long blonde hair than she does now with her short brown hair. The guilt hits him so hard on certain days that he actually hides from her, because if he has to sit with her and look at the choppy brown locks he cut himself… he might just cry. He usually _does_ cry in whatever hiding place he's chosen. He doesn't want to be the reason she feels less beautiful.

"Do I think you're beautiful?" he repeats. "Not just, are you beautiful? Not, do people think you're beautiful? Just what _I _think?"

"Is there any difference?" she asks.

_Is there a difference between night and day?_ he wonders, but out loud he says, "it's like I said, Rapunzel. You're something else."

She has a slightly devious smile on her face and he wonders if all these other females she's met in the palace are a good influence or a bad one. In any case, he's glad there are no frying pans within her reach. "Is that a no?" she asks.

It's one of those rare occasions when he's honest on purpose.

"You get more beautiful every day."


End file.
